Is the title a score? -- as in, the Fast and the Furious all knotted up at two. Or is it a head count, a poll? The ex-cop from Los Angeles (Paul Walker, resuming his role from the unquantified The Fast and the Furious of two years earlier) is undeniably …
The rare Perennium Mortalis blooms but once every seven years in the jungles of Borneo, harboring behind its beauty a "pharmaceutical equivalent to the Fountain of Youth." ("That'd be bigger than Viagra!") Bad luck for the botanical team, then, that it's blooming during mating season for a strain of giant …
Futuristic thriller wherein a world-weary mercenary escorts an angelic nymph of indeterminate powers, and for unknown purposes, from a Mongolian convent to New York City. The hyperkinetic camera and overinflated action create the wrong climate for the apocalyptic solemnity. With Vin Diesel, Melanie Thierry, Michelle Yeoh, Gerard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, …
Moral tale about the brash young turks (especially the pasty, mumbly Giovanni Ribisi) of a crooked stock brokerage. An uncinematic subject ("Do you know what 'bridge financing' is?") injected with testosterone and hip-hop. They're no help, and nor is the sickly bluish-greenish image. Writer-director Ben Younger is up front about …
The marble-eyed dragonslayer of Pitch Black -- a decent little movie, four years previous -- is enlisted, over his grumbled protests ("I just wanted to be left alone"), to face a bigger challenge: the planet-by-planet blitzkrieg of the Necromongers, otherwise known as the World-Enders, who want to bring everyone, everywhere, …
Stripped-down action sequel. Or anyway, the title is stripped down, dumping the definite articles and demoting the nouns to adjectives. The tricked-out action, meanwhile, barrels ahead with total disregard for lucidity or credibility. It’s not precisely a reunion of the original four stars, Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Michelle …
The world of street racing (vroom-vroom) intersects with that of truck hijacking: your basic drive-in movie (if there were still drive-ins), souped up with headbanger music (thunk-thunk), some chest-flattening effects of speed, and a honey-glazed cast of hot bods. (Michelle Rodriguez, among them, makes the jump from the low-budget, independent …
Ocean’s 11-style caper pic with more mayhem and darker skin. (Paul Walker’s whiteness here gleams like marble; his performance is similarly statuesque.) You get plenty of pretty machines and pretty ladies to go with your muscles, explosions, and bro-banter, but for a film stuffed with two of the hardest hardbodies …
The cars, they are very pretty. Vin Diesel's voice, it is very gravelly. The Rock, he is very large. (Though not as large as the muscle hauled in by the bad guys. Say this for the Fast & Furious franchise: it understands that it must keep topping itself in terms …
Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they’ve ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who’s fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family …
Late in the race, the fast-cars franchise twists open the nitrous and roars back to life, thanks to a standout villain (an icy cool Charlize Theron), a pleasing measure of self-consciousness about its own tropes and themes (what is family, anyway?), and better writing and humor (nitrous is also laughing …
Forty-nine years after Sidney Lumet's first courthouse drama, as well as first film of any type, Twelve Angry Men (which, inasmuch as it takes place in the jury room, can't quite be called a courtroom drama), the now eighty-one-year-old director returns to the genre. He had gone back to it …
Surprising Vin Diesel vehicle: first, for the initial switcheroo from supernatural action-adventure to supernatural whodunit; second, for a sturdily built storyline; third, for a somewhat lively and lighthearted turn from its often somnolent star. (Those widened, puppy-dog eyes!) Sadly, the more expected elements do much to dull the pleasure of …
Depressingly low-ambition action film about a muscle-bound DEA agent on the trail of revenge for the cross-fire murder of his wife. Or more realistically, about Vin Diesel on the trail of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, take your pick. (The bass tones and the …
Mildly disappointing, coming as it does from the writer-director of The Arrival, an efficient little s-f thriller in the body-snatcher mode. David Twohy has here an idea even more modest and rudimentary: spaceship crash-lands on planet of monsters. But the monsters crave the dark and shun the light, and the …